This invention relates to a tray washing system, and more particularly to a fully automated system for cleaning compartmented food service trays.
Various institutions, particularly elementary schools, now serve lunches and other meals on compartmented food service trays, rather than on conventional tableware, such as dinner plates, salad plates, sauce dishes, etc. This is advantageous in that when compartmented food service trays are employed, the purchasing, stocking, distributing, collecting and washing of ware is reduced to a single item. Also, small children are considerably more adept at handling a compartmented food service tray than they are at handling the numerous tableware items that must be used when a meal is served in the conventional manner.
The main disadvantage that has been experienced in the use of compartmented food service trays relates to the human effort involved in washing the trays after each meal. At the present time, tray washing includes manually scraping each tray, manually loading each tray into a dishwashing machine, and to subsequently manually unloading each tray from the machine. Because conventional dishwashing machines are not designed for use with compartmented food service trays, it is often necessary to manually inspect each tray after washing, and to re-wash many of the trays. At today's labor rates, any system involving so much manual labor can be prohibitively expensive. Also, due to social connotations, it is often impossible to hire "dishwashers", even though good salaries are offered.
One approach to solving the foregoing problem involves the use of disposable compartmented food service trays. In order to reduce volume of material involved, machines for shreading and/or compacting disposable trays and the food and paper refuse associated therewith have been proposed. Unfortunately, the use of presently available disposable compartmented food service trays is not wholly satisfactory. For example, it costs more to purchase disposable compartmented food service trays than to wash conventional, permanent-type compartmented food service trays, so that no real savings are realized. Also, when a shreading and/or compacting machine is employed, the use of compartmented food service trays necessitates the handling of a great volume of refuse. Perhaps most importantly, presently available disposable compartmented food service trays are flimsy in construction and unappetizing in appearance, and are therefore unsatisfactory to students, dieticians and educators.
The present invention comprises a fully automated compartmented food service tray cleaning system. In accordance with the preferred embodiment of the invention, trays are moved in timed sequence to a mechanism that pours a cleaning fluid over each tray and thereby removes refuse and silverware from the tray. Thereafter, the trays are moved through washing, rinsing and drying stations to a mechanism that automatically deposits the trays on a mobile self-depressing tray receiver. Preferably, each tray is loaded into the system by the person who has used the tray so that all of the manual labor that has heretofore been necessary in the washing of compartmented food service trays is completely eliminated.